Space may be the final frontier, but the Internet can sometimes be an even more scary (and dangerous) place, infested with harsh message-board critics and web sites with reviews so bad it would make a Klingon cringe. Star Trek Online has had its share of supporters and detractors in the short time it’s been out, and Cryptic’s doing everything it can to please players and forge (or Laforge) STO into the game they know it can become. We recently had a chance to chat with STO Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich about the game’s early history and where it will go in the future.
Much like the Borg, Star Trek Online is taking over computer systems worldwide and assimilating players into its far-reaching virtual universe.
Yes… all of our plans are going exactly as predicted. Resistance is futile. J
It looks like you’ve had a great launch last month. Anything in particular you want to brag about, like numbers or an interesting story?
We’re pleased with the amount of people that have been playing the game so far. We’re not at a point where we’re giving out exact numbers, but we’ve been happily surprised by the amount of people who are interested in Star Trek Online, and we look forward to providing them with a great experience in the near and far future.
Is there anything that’s working differently than how you anticipated, either in a good or bad way?
There are always balancing issues to tackle once a game goes live. Stuff like the damage a particular weapon does, or the way we handle a rule set in PvP always requires some tweaking. But in the big scheme, we think we accomplished what we set out to do. That doesn’t mean we’re done, but we’re in a good place to move forward.
What’s #1 on your list of things you still want to tweak and/or “make perfect”?
We still want to improve the game and constantly make it better, constantly add more things for players to do. I wouldn’t say that there isn’t just one thing that we’re trying to make perfect. We’re trying to improve the entire game; we can focus our efforts on multiple tasks. We’ve got the team looking in a number of directions to improve our players’ quality of life and to find ways to continually challenge them.
Star Trek is known for all kinds of strange events – time travel, clones, alternate realities, etc. What’s the “strangest” mission in the game right now, and what kind of plans do you have for the future?
Yeah, we definitely have some “strange” missions. It depends on what you consider strange. How about time travel trips? Trips into the Mirror Universe? We have those! We have plans to keep extending the realms of where you can go and what you can do, just like the Trek series did. Have you ever wanted to visit your own past?
You recently announced a bunch of new content for the coming months, much of it dealing with the Borg end-game content. We’ll be covering them in the next issue of Massive Online Gamer, but what kind of rewards will captains be able to look forward to for completing these tough episodes?
Without diving too deep into this I can say that yes there will be special loot and rewards for players completing these episodes. It’s always a little more exciting when you know you’ll receive something cool but you don’t know exactly what it is. We also are working towards better and better rewards as more of the Special Task Force episodes come out.
Along with Federation and Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans are listed on the “Factions” page of the site. Will we be able to see player characters in these factions soon?
Time and player feedback will determine what faction we have playable next. Right now we’re focusing on content for the current factions that we have playable. Ideally, though, we would like to have many more factions for players to choose from.
Finally, what’s your favorite color of tribble?
I actually like them all, but if I had to pick one as my favorite it would be the plain, simple, original brown color from The Original Series.
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
